


in your presence

by puckity



Series: Sam/Bucky Week 2014 [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexuality, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mutual Masturbation, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-19 18:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2397863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are different between them now, even though--if Barnes asked--Sam couldn't say exactly why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in your presence

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the finding Bucky trope, with bonus OT3 nudging.
> 
> Written for Sam/Bucky Week 2014 and beta'd by the wonderful-as-ever Rachel!
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/).

Steve says one week, ten days at most, and they’ll get someone out there to take in Barnes so Sam can go back to whatever it is he does now when Steve’s not around. One week from the night Sam woke up to Barnes in his unlocked motel room; seven days and the problem, the task, the responsibility, will be someone else’s to deal with. Seven days to make sure Barnes doesn’t put a bullet in Sam’s head—or in his own—and doesn’t rip off the rental car door and doesn’t burn their two-and-a-half star hotel in the suburbs of Richmond to the ground.

Sam can do seven days.

In the daytime they usually stay in; Sam opts for takeout instead of delivery just to get the chance to leave their room every couple of hours. He doesn’t know what Barnes does when he’s gone, but when Sam slips in the electronic key and the door beeps open he’s always there. Sitting at the desk near the window—on the edge of the shadows and tucked out of sight. Just like Sam left him. They barely talk and Sam feels lucky if he can get two sentences in a row out of Barnes. Mostly they just eat and run the TV even though Barnes stares more than he watches and Sam tries to work his way through a bestseller that someone left a few motel rooms back. It’s a love story although the two main characters still hate each other at this point, and Sam is pretty sure that one of them is gonna get cancer or dementia or something tragic and terminal. It just feels like that kind of book.

Night is silent. Sam’s been averaging about two and a half hours of sleep and he has yet to see Barnes so much as lay down. He doesn’t know if it’s whatever bastardized version of Steve’s serum HYDRA pumped into his veins or if it’s the Soldier’s training, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Barnes doesn’t need to sleep at all. When Sam pulls up his covers and reaches for the light switch Barnes moves from the desk to the other bed, sits on the end of it like a conditioned dog. Sam makes a conscious effort to say, “Goodnight, Barnes” and “Goodnight, Wilson” always echoes back—but neither of them go to bed. Barnes stays rigid and the moonlight casts him like an uncanny statue. Sam shifts and tosses and when his body finally gives into the smothering exhaustion he dreams without color or sound and wakes up clammy and sweating. When his head stops pounding from the inside out he mumbles, “Good morning, Barnes” and—as if on cue—Barnes moves from the bed to the desk and answers flat, “Good morning, Wilson.”

Seven days and Sam starts to feel antsy at the thought of it; he’s going stir-crazy and real crazy cooped up here with a live grenade who won’t even hold a damn conversation with him and there are only so many times he can pick up an order of sweet and sour pork before it starts to become a negative association for him. But Sam is doing this for Steve and for the Bucky that Steve knew and still loves and if he can camp out in the Iraqi desert for weeks on end while rockets litter the sky and sand then he can cope with one brainwashed, antisocial super-assassin for a few more days.

\---

A week comes and goes, and then eight days, and nine—and Sam is starting to get a really bad feeling about all of this. On day ten he gets a garbled text message from Steve, one long run-on sentence without capitalization or punctuation that sets off alarms in Sam’s head more than the content itself: _Sam cant get a team out to you right now things are worse than expected dont worry well be fine just take care of bucky until we get the situation under control_

There are a dozen replies Sam wants to send. _What???_ or _No way_ or _Are you alright?_ or _I can’t_. But in the end he types back, _Got it_ and leaves it at that. When he glances up from his phone Barnes is watching him, a faint crease pinched between his eyebrows.

“He—Steve isn’t coming.” His lips are a thin line, curved neither up nor down.

Sam blows a hard puff of air out of his nose. “Not yet.” The crease deepens. “He’s in the middle of something, but he’ll be here as soon as he can.”

Barnes stiffens. “Is he in trouble?”

“No, he’s fine.” Sam lies. “But even if he wasn’t, there’s not much you could do about it with that arm—is there?” It comes out nastier than he means it to but he’s sick of listening to that broken buzz and watching Barnes heft his left arm with his right whenever he moves. Sam rubs the delirium from his eyes. “Can I please take a look at it?”

Barnes hesitates and for a second his face cracks in a million different directions and Sam thinks that he might be able to see Steve’s Bucky if he only knew which layer to start peeling away at. Then the cracks recede until they’re just lines across skin like wrinkles or pimples, just the imperfections that a person is built from. Sam takes a single step towards him and Barnes pulls his hoodie up over his head.

Sam doesn’t know what he expected, didn’t know he was expecting anything until the reality struck him as incongruous. Barnes is constructed like Steve, taunt and impossibly chiseled and Sam figures that HYDRA must have kept that part of the formula intact. There is a slight ripple of muscle under skin and his chest is rising and falling fast—much faster than Sam thought was even possible for the Soldier. He realizes that Barnes is gasping, heaving, eyeing Sam wild as he inches closer. He’s more than afraid; he’s terrified.

Sam stops about a foot out from him, holds his hands far from his body and any hidden traps Barnes might think are concealed there. He starts to crouch down then stops, straightens. He smiles with a tight mouth and it seems to calm Barnes.

“You can stand up.” Sam nods for reassurance. “It’s okay.”

Barnes’s eyes go a little less wide. He’s up in one fluid movement; it’s so sudden that it makes Sam jump back a bit. Now that he’s not hunched over or stuffed into a sweatshirt Sam can appreciate him as a supersoldier specimen. He knows it’s not the time for it but Sam can’t be sure when—if—he’ll get another chance. His eyes linger on the cut of Barnes’s collarbone and the dips between his abs. The room is getting warm, not like sunshine but like boiling blood, and Sam is sufficiently ashamed of himself for checking out someone who just almost had a panic attack taking off his shirt. Then Sam’s eyes flick to the shoulder that glints under the fluorescent lightening and his priorities realign.

The seam of skin and metal is all jagged scar tissue that grew around and onto and over, blurring the demarcation between human and machine. There are clear cracks and warps in the arm; a jumble of wires crawl out exposed near the elbow. Sam had known the arm was malfunctioning since their first night alone in the darkness, but he’d been operating under the assumption that someone was on their way to take care of it. To take care of Bucky. Now that the timeline for that had been fucked to hell, Sam needs to improvise. He runs through every contact he’d ever made in his head, scrolling for one person who might be able to fix a cybernetic prosthetic-cum-weapon. A few engineers, a robotics specialist, and two military weapons contractors—but Sam doesn’t trust any of them not to take one look at Barnes and turn them both in. Or worse.

The arm, Sam decides, will have to wait.

Sam follows the line of Barnes’s shoulders, past the alloy and onto the flesh and bones. The arm had caught his attention first— _whose attention wouldn’t it catch_ , Sam thinks—but now he’s focusing on the other side and the ugly black and green that still tinges the skin above Barnes’s right arm. It’s bruising—and if that’s from the fight on the helicarrier then it must have been one hell of an injury. Most likely a dislocated shoulder—Sam remembers Steve describing a crunch before Bucky finally dropped the blade—and judging by the angry jut of bone bulging out where it shouldn’t be Barnes probably tried to relocate it himself and only half succeeded. So he’d been using one arm with a poorly-reset dislocated shoulder to support the other that was on fizz; no wonder he hadn’t tried to kill Sam in his sleep yet.

“Can I?” Sam reaches towards the injured shoulder but doesn’t make contact. Barnes tenses, then nods and takes a deep breath like he’s steadying himself for a blow.

Sam ghosts his fingers over the discolored skin, gives Barnes a minute to adjust to the touch. Then he presses, light but firm, feeling for breaks or knots and listening close for verification of pain. He rubs against the budge of bone that doesn’t look right, even to his untrained eyes, and Barnes’s breath hitches.

“Does that hurt? You gotta tell me if it hurts.” Sam’s hands hover and it hits him how hot Barnes’s body is. He’s not sure why, but he must have thought that the Soldier ran cold-blooded.

Barnes doesn’t look at him. “It hurts,” he grits out and the waver in his voice is all Sam needs to understand just how much.

Sam sighs. “I should take you to a hospital.” Barnes’s head jerks towards him and his eyes flash like venom. Sam’s nerves are shot; he crosses his arms to hide the shake in his confidence. “Don’t look at me like that—I’m not stupid. Of course we can’t go to the hospital, but you’re probably gonna wish we did.”

Barnes looks at him, level and guarded, and behind his eyes Sam can feel the Soldier’s stare burning out like acid.

“Your shoulder was reset bad, so I’m gonna have to try and fix it myself. And that’ll hurt like a motherfucker.” The acid seeps out but Sam can see Barnes trying to contain it. “Then I’ll need to wrap it up and ice it. I don’t know if you sleep or not, but you’re gonna have to at least lie down or it won’t ever start healing. There’s not much I can do on the mechanical side of things,” Sam gestures at Barnes’s left arm. “But I can do something about this and hopefully it will help with the pain in general.”

Sam wants to wait for something, some kind of acknowledgement of the plan. Maybe some input, a concern, a question. But he knows that nothing’s coming.

So he turns, reaches for his wallet and key; then suddenly there is a hand around his wrist and the grip is weaker than Sam would’ve guessed it to be.

“Where are you going?” Barnes’s head is down but his fingers flex like they are trying out the feel of Sam.

“Got to get supplies.” Sam pauses and adds gentle, “Don’t worry. I won’t be gone long.”

The grip goes slack and Sam’s wrist drops but the print of Barnes’s hand lingers. Even after Sam walks into the hotel lobby, flashes a cocky smile, and asks the chipper receptionist where the nearest pharmacy is—he can still feel it as he walks out the glass double doors.

\---

Barnes sleeps that night. He lays down in his bed and positions himself the way Sam showed him to and shuts his eyes and breathes out even into the stale, air-conditioned night air and if that’s not sleep then it’s at least dedication to the concept. Sam is so ready for a solid rest; he hikes up the covers and turns off the TV and clicks the lights dark—but it doesn’t come. It won’t come. Images hide under his eyelids and when he starts to drift they batter him, keep coming whether he wants them to or not.

Barnes beneath his hands—firm, compliant, waiting for the pain. Waiting for Sam’s hands to hurt him. Resigned to it, expecting it. A flinch and a grunt and Sam would be screaming like a baby by now but Barnes bites down on his cries and swallows them behind his teeth. Sam hates that he has to do it like this, hates that the first real touch Barnes gets outside of HYDRA is brutality—even if it’s necessary.

Barnes beneath his hands as Sam rolls an ace bandage across his already swelling joint. Staring ahead without blinking, a dead glaze that mutes any expression his face might be capable of making. A few whimpers when Sam pulls too tight or catches a bad angle or when Sam’s fingertips graze skin that is outside the territory, along Barnes’s chest or at the base of his neck.

Barnes beneath his hands as Sam refuses to let him feed himself; says that he should minimize movement for a little while. That’s not entirely true but Sam feels so damn guilty about how hard he had to wrench to re-reset the shoulder that he kind of wants to make it up to him, if Barnes will let him. Barnes opens his mouth to the forkfuls of pork burrito that Sam offers but chews like it’s gruel and swallows thickly. He takes the makeshift ice pack that Sam brings and doesn’t resist when he leans back onto his bed and Sam tucks a blanket over him.

Sam drifts deep and the images start to change.

Barnes beneath his hands bloodied and motionless, and Sam can’t say why. It’s a fight or an ambush or a sniper’s shot four rooftops over and he’s laying there on his side, back to Sam just like he is now. Sam wants to grip him, shake him hard out of this cold sleep, but he can’t ask and Barnes can’t answer and Steve—how will Sam be able to tell Steve what happened when he doesn’t even know himself?

The color drains, then rushes back in over-saturation.

Barnes beneath his hands—sweating, panting, writhing. Flush against the mattress with eyes screwed up and lips bitten at and more emotion bursting across his face than Sam has seen in—ever. He’s groaning low and Sam’s fingers trail up his body etching out every wound twice-healed over and Sam leans close enough to smell the singe of overheated wiring and whispers, “Can I?” and Barnes hisses out, “Yes.”

Sam’s eyelids fly open. It’s a trick of this not-dream that he can’t tell where he is, where he was when he closed his eyes earlier. He shifts and it’s a bed—not his but he’s been away for so long that he’s not even sure he remembers what his feels like anymore—and it’s a room and he’s not alone and it floods back now: Barnes and Steve and wrong shoulders and maybe also some bad Mexican food. It’s only really been a few seconds and he didn’t really _forget_ but everything was so vivid before and now it’s all just damped down and muzzled.

Everything except one thing, one bad thing. Not bad like genocidal-global-conspiracies-bad, more like this-can-only-make-things-more-complicated-and-awkward-bad. He chews on the inside of his cheek and twists his tongue so he doesn’t moan because he’s hard— _so_ hard—and it’s bad, bad news and a bad idea and definitely a bad plan, and he can’t. Whatever it is his body suddenly decided it wants to do, he _can’t_.

He lays there clenching and unclenching his fists, taking measured breaths and listing out every military acronym he can think of to keep his mind from wandering. When that doesn’t work, he goes to fallbacks like his eighth grade Art teacher in a speedo or finding a scorpion in his combat boots.

Eventually he gives up, spits out “Damnit!” and heads to the bathroom for a cold shower.

\---

Things are different now, but only if Sam measures in inches instead of feet. Barnes goes with him to the grocery store and occasionally even agrees to eat out at a restaurant. They take walks around parks and malls and wander through sidewalks that are busy enough so they don’t stick out but not crowded in a way that might set Barnes off. Sam buys him some sets of cotton shirts and boxers on sale and finally gets Barnes to change out of the only pair of pants he seems to own. He lets Barnes borrow an old pair of jeans; they’re loose at the waist but Barnes doesn’t complain and they spend the whole afternoon sitting at a laundromat watching the spin cycles.

Barnes talks more too. Not really _more_ more but his answers have stopped being monosyllabic for the most part, and sometimes he even starts conversations; Sam nearly tripped off the curb and into oncoming traffic the first time that happened. Now the TV doesn’t always have to be on and the silences don’t grate at Sam the way they used to.

Things are different between them now too, but Sam thinks that might just be on his end. It’s ridiculous, he tells himself. Steve’s been gone too long, Sam hasn’t been on anything even resembling a date with someone who _wasn’t_ a genetically-enhanced supersoldier in over a year. Sam’s tired—worn past the bone and into the marrow—and the synapses in his brain must be firing out of sync, if they’re firing at all. Because it’s not just a bad idea professionally, as a counselor and as a part-time superhero. It’s a bad idea period. On top of everything else, Sam doesn’t even _know_ Barnes—at least not the Barnes who sleeps in the bed next to his every night. Doesn’t know anything about him, other than the way his body clenches when it thinks pain is coming and the look in his eyes when he hears his name but can’t place what it means.

Although that’s not entirely true. Sam knows that Barnes hates police procedurals but he must at least be able to tolerate daytime soap operas because sometimes—when Sam gets back to the room—one will be on and Barnes will be leaning back on his palms with his jaw a little slack (and he’ll snatch the remote control away if Sam tries to change the channel). He knows that Barnes likes hot sauce on everything; Sam’s started asking for extra packets and saving them in a plastic bag in their mini-fridge. He knows that Barnes gets phantom sensations—sometimes Sam catches him unconsciously scratching at his left arm when mosquitoes buzz near him. He knows that the Soldier still talks to him, probably every day, and Sam thinks that might be why Barnes sometimes looks like he might have something to say but then clams up when Sam looks at him too hard.

Sam knows that Barnes trusts him—even though he probably couldn’t say why, if Sam ever asked.

“Are you sure those things don’t ruin clothes?” Barnes’s eyebrows knot together and it takes a minute for Sam to catch up to what he’s talking about; they’re sitting in their hotel room eating some oranges that they picked up on the way back from a second load of laundry. “I think they probably ruin clothes.”

“Well, they haven’t ruined any of yours yet—so there you go.” Sam cuts two wedges and offers the bigger one to Barnes. He reaches for it with his metal hand. “You know, I thought that with that arm of yours you’d be a little less skeptical of modern technology.”

Sam says it flippant, gives it half a thought less than he should, and regrets it as soon as it tumbles out. Barnes freezes and the arm whines sharp like it knows it’s being talked about. The orange slice is squeezed between thumb and fingertips and Sam waits for it to be crushed to juice and pulp, dripping down through the seams into the mechanics underneath.

Barnes exhales through his teeth, jaw set like a knife. “Yeah,” he mutters. “You’d think so.” He lets out a dark, bitter laugh and pops the wedge into his mouth. He sucks and chews and when he pulls it out it’s nothing but rind.

Sam swallows down a too-big piece of his own slice and sputters as it burns against his dry throat. Now he knows that Barnes still has some kind of a sense of humor too.

\---

It’s been almost a month that they’ve been together, living next to and on top of each other out of duffel bags and laundry carts. It’s been almost a month and they’ve settled—into a hiccup-y rhythm of early morning walks and lunch at the kitchenette in their suite that’s been upgraded on a Stark Industries tab and afternoons of Sam doing work and Barnes doing research and $1 DVD rentals with takeout dinner. Sam tries to have them eat at a real restaurant at least once a week—mostly so Sam doesn’t feel like he’s under house arrest all the time, and to break up the monotony of life without a mission.

But that’s not true, because Sam does have a mission. It’s just a mission that will have to suck it up and make small talk over a bread basket every seven days or so.

At night Sam reads—the cute receptionist lent him a biography of Diana Ross—and helps Barnes wash up. He can’t believe that the arm isn’t waterproof; that’d be pretty shitty planning on HYDRA’s part. But it is broken and Sam doesn’t want to risk it. When they get down to his discount boxers Barnes nods at him like he’s agreeing to take out the trash—“I’ve got it from here.”

The rest of Barnes’s shower is quick; Sam gets in after he’s done and wastes the water pressure running it long. Sometimes he just stands there—needs to feel the wet run down the grooves of his body, needs to go numb with the repetition of it. But more often than not he needs the heat, the pound, the spray that locks in all the noises he’s got to make. He’ll close his eyes against the stream and imagine the receptionist or Natasha but will always end up on Steve. Steve on his knees or pressed up behind him arms closing around Sam’s hips and the slick around his cock isn’t his hand it’s Steve—lips on his neck or brushing along his ear and Steve whispers, “Bucky” and Sam comes so hard that his legs shake a little and he has to grab onto the safety handrail so that he doesn’t slip and break his neck.

It’s getting worse, like a habit or a compulsion, and when it’s over he always drags a hand down his face in frustration.

He misses Steve bad—ridiculously bad for having only known the guy a few months longer than he’s known Barnes—but it’s more than that now. It’s gotten complicated and Sam’s not entirely sure what he’s gonna do about that.

\---

Barnes sleeps like the dead. He sleeps like he’s still frozen, like if he moves too much one way or the other he might fall off the edge of the world again. Sometimes Sam laughs about it when he’s laying there staring up at the sheet of dark where the ceiling should be; then he envies it when he can’t fall asleep himself. Marvels at how Barnes can wake up in the exact same position that he laid down in, while Sam jerks up at the alarm with his legs knotted in sheets and his blanket kicked off onto the dingy carpet floor.

Sam knows how Barnes sleeps, and that’s why he can tell that Barnes isn’t sleeping tonight.

The rustle catches Sam’s attention. It could just be a slight shift but it keeps going, gets louder and more aggressive. Sam’s mind snaps alert and he worries that Barnes might be having a flashback. He’s about to get up, tensed and ready to fight the Soldier for Barnes if he has to, when he hears it. A grunt that slips into a moan and it grates along Sam’s raw nerves; he’d say it’s a hallucination but this isn’t how Barnes moans in the fantasies Sam bans from everything except the shower and his dreams.

The Barnes that burrowed into the filthy recesses of Sam’s mind starts off soft, hesitant, almost fragile beneath Sam. He’s 90, he’s 27—but to Sam he looks like a kid no older than 23 shipping out for his first tour. Laughter that surprises Sam, a way of facing things wounded but defiant that makes Sam want to pack him away from the ugliness of the world but it’s too late—the world got him long ago and the bend of his spine is like steel, like grit in a gash, like ash kicked up in everyone else’s eyes. Barnes reminds him a little of brash and earnest eyes that Sam once fell into endless and woke up alone covered in blood and sand. _I don’t need saving_ , Riley had whispered, and Sam supposes that Barnes doesn’t either.

In his mind it’s Sam who needs it and Barnes gives it to him. When Sam starts Barnes comes undone, unravels like scarves out of a hat and it’s noisy and messy and magic. All the sounds that he makes tumble out needy and uninhibited now that the mask is off and the pretenses are dropped and maybe the Barnes in his mind is more like Steve than Riley, in certain ways.

That Barnes can’t contain it, lacks control when someone doesn’t hold it over him. But this Barnes—the real one in the next bed over—is deliberate and perfunctory. He’s jacking off fast but not frantic, like this is just another task that’s been assigned to him.

Maybe, Sam thinks, that’s exactly how it is. How the Soldier’s been trained to do it. Barnes is using his left hand instead of his right and Sam winces as he imagines the sting.

More moans, punctuated with the same flat pitch and tone and cut off before any enjoyment can seep into it; Sam’s not sure if Barnes knows he’s awake or not but he’s not making any effort at hiding what going on. Sam would think that he’s doing it on purpose—wants Sam to hear and to _know_ —but that would imply that Barnes is getting something out of it. And Sam doesn’t think that he is, not really.

A few minutes and Barnes goes rigid; Sam can almost feel the weight of him jerk into the mattress. He grunts then hisses out and the tension that’s grown like tumors in the room starts to dissipate. Soon he hears Barnes’s breathing even out and then the only rustle of sheets is Sam as he tries to get comfortable, or at least slightly less uncomfortable. He tries to shake those hollow moans and what they do to him off of his body and out of his head but they’re there now—seared deep and Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get rid of them completely.

\---

Barnes suggests a new route for their morning walk the next day and Sam’s so tired that he almost misses what a big deal that is. Something new, an unsolicited suggestion. Progress.

 _Or maybe Barnes is feeling more relaxed after last night_ , Sam thinks, and immediately wishes he didn’t. The memory surges back like a chokehold and Sam is glad that he covers it with brushing his teeth so that Barnes can’t read his expression like a fucking map to all the messed up shit that his dick’s been getting him caught up in lately.

The route is new, even to Sam, and as they pad along he wonders how Barnes can walk it so sure of his steps. It winds off the main road they usually stick to and meanders through a cluster of one-way streets and dead ends; the area doesn’t look bad so Sam’s not worried—but he does hope that Barnes can actually find his way back because Sam doesn’t think that he’s gonna be able to. They pass a row of neighborhood shops with most of their metal grates locked down. Only one or two of them are already cranked halfway up; Sam can see figures shuffling around behind the CLOSED signs.

“You got a GPS in that thing?” Sam tries to crack through their morning chill with a joke.

Barnes looks at him, eyebrows low. “What?”

“Nevermind.” Sam sighs and they walk five more blocks in silence.

When they finally round a corner and hit a community park—one that the city makes no obvious attempts at upkeep with, if the overgrown, patchy grass and rusty monkey bars are anything to go by—Barnes stops, pulls back and Sam is three steps gone before he realizes it.

“What?” Sam pokes a finger at Barnes, but not too high and not too close. “You didn’t drag me all this way just to stare at a playground full of kids like a pervert, did you?”

“There aren’t a lot of kids here right now.” Barnes mutters, and he’s right but that doesn’t answer Sam’s question.

“Well, kids or not we’re gonna look pretty damn weird if we just keep standing here.” Sam backtracks until he’s next to Barnes again. “So, you wanna tell me why we’re here?”

There’s a tic in the muscles of Barnes’s jaw. He glances at Sam and then nods back towards the park entrance, where a line has formed in front of a few tables stacked with big tin pots and baskets full of something—Sam guesses it’s apples. The people behind the pots are ladling out steaming bowlfuls and the line is starting to disperse out onto park benches and under the gnarled, thick-skinned trees rooted there.

“My pancakes are no good for you anymore?” Sam says it because he doesn’t know what else to say, not because he means it.

Barnes crosses his arms tight across his chest. “Did you ever wonder how I ate after I escaped—before I found you?”

And no, Sam honestly hadn’t wondered that. It hadn’t even crossed his mind. He must have written it off as decades of Barnes’s stealth training and assumed—since he hadn’t shown up in Sam’s motel room malnourished and starving—that he’d made due.

Sam looks more closely at the pop-up soup kitchen, thinks that now he can almost see someone with their dark baseball cap pulled low and their hands shoved hard into their pockets and just a glint of something flashing in the sunlight at the rim of their jacket cuff.

“Do you think they’d ever let me help out—at a place like this?” Barnes turns to Sam, face smooth like it’s been sanded and Sam wants to read it pitiful but the firm set of Barnes’s gaze won’t let him.

“Can you serve soup with that arm?”

The edge of Barnes’s mouth twitches and pulls up. “Yeah.”

“Well then,” Sam clasps him on the shoulder without thinking—like he’s done it a thousand times before—and only hesitates for a second at the metal beneath his palm. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

\---

Sam’s checking his e-mail—nothing from Steve or his mom, but his supervisor at the VA did send another message asking when Sam thinks he’s gonna be back from his “personal time”—and Barnes is flipping through a weekly gossip magazine; it’s the only one that the cute receptionist said she could let them take without her manager noticing. She’d slipped a post-it with her phone number inside the front cover and Sam had to play it off like it was a secret code when Barnes found it.

Sam had stuffed the number in his wallet, more for his own pride than because he was actually gonna call her. But maybe, who knows? Things are so weird right now that maybe Sam does need a casual, civilian date.

Or maybe he needs—

“Did I wake you up last night?” The question comes out of nowhere and that’s the Soldier’s MO but Sam knows there’s bleed-through, knows that there are probably things that are the Soldier’s but were Barnes’s first. Maybe this is one of them.

It’s the second time that Barnes has thrown Sam off his guard today, and they haven’t even had dinner yet. Sam wants to say “What?” reflexively but he knows exactly what Barnes is talking about and it wouldn’t make things any less awkward to play dumb.

“Nah,” he doesn’t look up from his computer screen, doesn’t blink. He focuses so hard that the backlight starts to burn the corners of his eyes. “I was already awake.”

Barnes flips a page. “Good.” And that’s that.

Until it happens again that night, and again two nights after that.

\---

For the fourth time in less than a week, Sam hears the now-familiar rustle of Barnes’s sheets. He braces himself—it’s almost part of their routine. Sam doesn’t lie wide awake for an hour afterwards with his skin on fire like he did the first time; now it almost lulls him to sleep. His mind, not his body—although that’s starting to get desensitized too. Slowly.

But the beginning, the first slide—Sam’s fingers spark with anticipation. He swallows like a mouth full of taffy and when Barnes grunts it only gets tackier as it forces its way down Sam’s throat.

Sam waits for the pace to pick up, waits for the moans that aren’t bitten back and the metal hiss; they both seem to have implicitly accepted all of this as just another thing between them, something they do even if they don’t really understand it themselves. Sam tells himself that Barnes needs it and so Sam’s letting him have it but on the nights when Barnes drifts off without it Sam finds himself staying awake longer and waking up worse the next morning.

Sam waits, but something’s off tonight. Barnes seems to have stalled; the noises hush and Sam thinks he might have fallen asleep in the middle of it but then the mattress creaks like old bones Sam doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that he’s being stared at.

“Sam.” It isn’t a question because they both already know that answer.

“Yeah?” Sam’s mouth is sticky, still gummed up. “What’s up?”

His eyes crack and he can see Barnes sitting up on the edge of his bed, hands folded between his knees, facing Sam.

“It’s supposed to feel good, isn’t it?” His voice is soft but not shy, not tinged with embarrassment like Sam’s probably would be.

“Yeah, in general I’d say it is.” Sam rolls onto his side and bends his arm under his ear. “Doesn’t it feel good for you?”

Barnes shrugs, stretches his fingers. “I don’t know. It was always just—something that needed to be done.”

That hits Sam in the gut like a snowball with a rock in the middle. He props himself up on an elbow.

“No one touches the Soldier, not like that.” Barnes holds out his left hand, palm up, and flexes it until the joints grind. “So he—I— _we_ —had to take care of it ourselves.”

“And what about Barnes?” Sam’s bicep is starting to ache from holding his head up, but he ignores the throb. “Does anyone touch him?”

Barnes looks up and his eyes shine bitter. It’s dark and Sam shouldn’t be able to catch it, but somehow he does. “No one but the Soldier. Not for a long, long time.” There’s a hard grate to Barnes’s words and Sam thinks he can hear the Brooklyn in him now.

Sam’s got questions—he’s got things to say. Things that have been bothering him for a while now about how HYDRA had treated Barnes, about the extent of what they made the Soldier do. About how Barnes survived it, how he keeps on surviving it. Whether he’s really surviving or not. The counselor in him wants the full file in his hands, wants to know what he’s dealing with so he can decide _how_ to deal with it. So far they’ve been stumbling along on nothing more than instinct and faith and a thready trust and Sam figures that they’ve done damn pretty good for what they had to go on but he’s worried—sometimes he’s _terrified_ —that’s he’s making mistakes and fucking Barnes up more than he already is without even realizing it.

“Sam?” And this is a question, one that Sam hopes he knows the answer to.

“Yeah?”

“Can you touch me?”

The room feels like a vacuum all of the sudden; the air sucks out of it and Sam is left a little heady in the wake. His arm finally gives and his head drops back heavy onto his pillow.

“Sure.”

Sam shifts over. Makes space for Barnes in front of him and opens his arms. The mattress bounces a few seconds later and Barnes settles with his back to Sam, leaving a diplomatic distance between their bodies. Sam closes his arms and drags Barnes tight against him.

There it is again, the heat that Sam never expects from Barnes. And the taut, clutching muscles that—even now—are trying to resist Sam’s attempts at gentleness. Barnes’s hair smells like lavender—he must be using the free bottles that housekeeping leaves everyday—and Sam reminds himself to bring up a haircut, or at least a trim, with him tomorrow. For now Sam tucks his chin over Barnes’s shoulder and tickles at Barnes’s feet with his toes until he starts to squirm. Starts to unclench.

Sam runs his hands slow over Barnes’s stomach and chest, tries to work his way under Barnes’s t-shirt with little success.

He taps at Barnes’s hip. “You wanna do this shirts on or off?”

There’s nothing more than a hitch in Barnes’s breath. He exhales, “Off.”

Sam pulls his arms back careful and peels off his own undershirt. He gives Barnes space to undress himself, to take off however many clothes he feels comfortable with. For his part, Sam keeps his boxers on—he doesn’t want to spook Barnes or be weird about it. Besides, it’s not about him—he’s doing this for Barnes, because Barnes needs it.

Barnes twists his neck to look at Sam. He keeps his boxers on too, and after a beat they both lie back down. Barnes presses close to Sam this time and Sam pushes a knee between his legs.

Sam traces circles and stars along Barnes’s skin, runs a hand through his hair, plants a light kiss at the base of his neck. Barnes breathes deep and Sam can feel it shake in his chest, rattle around and come out battered and bruised. Sam closes his eyes and can imagine a hundred nights like this—in the desert, in their tents, in other motel rooms a hell of a lot shabbier than this one—but then he opens them and there’s never been a night like this. Barnes moans behind closed lips; it reverberates down his throat and Sam kisses a line like breadcrumbs behind it.

Sam’s hard again—was he hard before or does it just feel like he’s always hard these days?—and Sam knows Barnes can feel his cock jutting aggressively against his ass. It’s not Sam’s fault; he’s not _trying_ to be annoyingly, painfully turned-on by Barnes and everything about this situation. But he is and he hesitates, doesn’t want Barnes to take it the wrong way. The hesitation seems to bother Barnes far more than Sam’s hard-on; he arcs back and grinds rough into Sam.

Sam groans and doesn’t even try to stifle it. He rubs callused fingertips over Barnes’s nipples and that earns him a hiss through clenched teeth. He teases along the elastic waistband of Barnes’s boxers but doesn’t dip down. Barnes’s left arm whizzes impatient and Sam feels it start to inch down. Sam catches it—it’s hotter than he thought it would be too—and laces his fingers between metal ones. Barnes stills.

“Use your other hand,” Sam whispers along the shell of his ear. He rolls them back a little together to give Barnes better access to himself. He grabs Barnes’s right arm at the wrist and brings his hand up to Barnes’s mouth.

“Spit.”

Barnes pulls a face that Sam doesn’t have to see to know is there; he chuckles. “Trust me, it’ll help.”

Barnes spits thick into his palm and Sam guides it back down, leaves it at the elastic stretch. The metal fingers pinch and it almost hurts but Sam doesn’t let go.

Sam thinks he’s gonna slide down slow, tentative—but Barnes seems to make the decision fast and just go for it instead of lingering. When Barnes wraps his hand around his cock he moans shallow and broken and Sam wonders how long it’s been since he’s done this without the Soldier. But Barnes doesn’t give him too much time to think about it before he starts stroking quick and overzealous, like a kid who’s just discovered jerking off. And Sam can’t help himself; he stretches down and covers Barnes’s hand with his own and slows the tempo just a bit, tightens the grip, and maybe he’s not doing this solely for Barnes after all.

Barnes’s head pitches back and his mouth cracks open but he’s swallowing down all his sounds and Sam kisses up the side of his throat trying to coax them out. Barnes pushes back and grinds against Sam and he _can’t_ do that— _shouldn’t_ do that—but Sam’s not gonna stop him. Barnes grinds back and thrusts up and his moans start to slip out and the metal fingers squeeze like they are trying to snap Sam’s off at the knuckles but he doesn’t care. All he cares about is how close Barnes is, how close Sam knows he is, and a far second is the nagging thought that if he comes just from Barnes dry humping him he might never hear the end of it. From anybody.

The hand beneath his on Barnes’s cock is getting shaky—his whole arm, whole body is starting to twitch. Barnes goes rigid, bowing out, and then hunching in tight and Sam can feel the sticky hot wet streak across his fingers. Barnes gasps out at the end, pants like he’s been held underwater for too long, and coughs out a few choked back moans from earlier. Sam lets go of Barnes’s right hand and runs his arm up to hold Barnes around the stomach, to give him something to anchor himself back onto.

He almost forgets about his own dick until Barnes pushes back and rubs again, not as frantic as before but still intentional. Sam wants to say no, say that it’s okay and he’s fine and next time or whatever other bullshit he can pull out so that Barnes doesn’t feel obligated. But it’s been a while for him too and he’s so close—how had he not realized how close he was until now?—and Barnes doesn’t seem to mind and sometimes—no matter how hard he tries—Sam is a little selfish too. So he doesn’t force it but he doesn’t push Barnes away either.

It’s a second or maybe a minute and the heat, the impossible heat from a man kept on ice for so long, is getting to be too much and Sam finally lets himself go—fingers digging into flesh and metal and lips hard against the curve of Barnes’s spine and everything’s tinged lavender and he comes with curse and a rush of feelings that can only make things messier from here on out.

Afterwards, Sam clings—which is something he _does_ but isn’t prepared to really have people know about, until his legs start to cramp. He rolls away slightly but keeps his hands on Barnes.

“Shit.” It’s not bad and it’s not good, it just is—like them.

Sam wants to ask how it was, was it good, is Barnes alright—but he drifts off before he can say any of it and his dreams must be on hiatus because there’s nothing waiting for him behind his eyelids except warm blackness. Weight shifts in the night and Sam’s subconscious knows that Barnes has left before his brain registers their morning alarm.

They wake up in separate beds, still wearing nothing but their boxers. They smile at each other out of the corners of their eyes as they pull their shirts on. Sam lets Barnes use the bathroom first and Barnes suggests breakfast tacos after their morning walk. They take an afternoon nap and Sam checks his e-mail late today. When he opens the browser there is just one new message—and it’s from Steve. The title is simply: RECOVERY TEAM ON ITS WAY.

Sam stares at it for a little while. Eventually he closes the page without clicking on the message and tells himself that he’ll read the whole thing tomorrow.


End file.
